Aug 26, 2012

It is another week - and I have some exciting news!! I am going to Boston! Well, kind of. I'm being transferred into the English program to cover 2 singles wards. That should be quite the adventure. I know that the wards are called Longfellow Park 1 and 2 but I honestly don't know where the building is, or how old the singles wards are or anything. My companion will be Sister Williams - she is so great! I'm really excited to get to learn from her. Also, another plus is that I will be in a walking area which means lots of exercise and we probably won't be being fed quite so much as I have been here in Lynn. But don't worry, the members have been feeding us a TON as we are saying goodbyes and such.

Sister Rivera is also headed out of town to be with Sister McKee (fellow vernalite) in Providence, Rhode Island. Sister Figueredo is staying here in Lynn and will be joined by Sister Love (who has served in Providence for a pretty good chunk of time - 8 months or so I think.

Oh, I got my hair cut today :) I have bangs :) Cool, eh?

This week really has been the best - I am super sad saying goodbye to all these people that have become my family, but I have had so much time this week to reflect on the many amazing experiences I have had in Lynn. I have so many good memories here in this area. I am definitely excited for whatever may be ahead, but it will be hard not to look back a little bit. I just have to "remember Lot's Wife" (Look up the Elder Holland talk about that scripture - dynamite!)

Anyway, this week has been totally crazy - despedidas aside. We had a baptism on Saturday! Why didn't you know that we were going to be holding a baptism? Because we didn't know either.

Long story short, Maritza got her answer - after her month break we gave her. She finally felt that witness of the spirit that she needed - we watched the John Tanner video with her from the Doctrine and Covenants videos and she told us she wanted to get baptized right away (just like he did). Catch was that she had to leave Sunday night to go on vacation with her mom to Florida and then to the D.R. So, we whipped up a baptism for Saturday and she was confirmed Sunday. She bore her testimony in sacrament meeting and then skipped town after church. Crazy! It was a really cool experience though. Just to see that she had the faith to do everything so fast. She's definitely a spontaneous person, but the way she approached her baptism really tells me that she is going to work hard to remain active in the church.

Those are definitely the highlights of the week. Transfer meeting is tomorrow. I've had kind of a hard time packing because of the large amounts of things I have accumulated, but our zone leaders are going to help us take all our stuff because we're moving two missionaries.

I love you all!! I wish you all the bestest most happiest week and I will talk to you very soon - Monday!

Aug 13, 2012

Hey there family!!! So, exciting news of the week - today we're actually going to do something fun!!! We've been working really hard all morning so we will have time to go to Boston - our district is actually going to hang out together because we ran so far behind last week that we ran out of time - Pirate museum of Salem will just have to wait I suppose.

Well, that's not REALLY the exciting news. Probably the best thing all week was church yesterday. I was absolutely AMAZED at just how many people showed up unexpectedly. SO many people who we have been visiting and praying for just showed up and filled the church with such a great spirit. I was seriously SO happy. We had 4 investigators come and so many less active members come. It was like a Christmas miracle or something.

Gaby is doing so great! She got interviewed to accept a calling this next week and she told us she accepted it. Woot! She seemed very excited about it. I have a feeling she's going to get to help us out in the missionary department. I really hope she gets made the Gospel Principles teacher, because we really need one and it would be an incredible chance for her to learn more about the gospel. She has such a strong testimony. Also, I don't know if I mentioned it last week, she got a slight promotion to be a cook and is now only scheduled from Monday to Friday (unless they really need her on the weekends). Heavenly Father is so absolutely amazing.

We went and had dinner on Saturday with Hermana Cuevas - she was talking about her mission that she served in her home country - she's from the D.R. She was saying that she feels kind of bad for us that it is so hard to find solid investigators. She said that in her mission people would call the missionaries saying, "Aye Mormones! Vengan a mi casa!" (Hey Mormons! Come to my house!). They would have 15-20 baptisms a month! We're lucky if our whole mission gets 40 or 50 in a month - what a crazy difference, right?

Other good news for the week is that the Rodriguez Family (the ones we found while we were at a less active member's house last week) is super solid. They really want to come to church. Noel is talking to his boss to work something out and Amarillys really wants to bring the kids to primary. They're having us over tonight for their family's FHE and they really want to cook for us - yum! I really like Dominican food. I'm sure no one would have guessed it before my mission but I really actually love eating beans now. It just took 30 or 40 tries to get accustomed to the grainy texture :)

Things are really looking up here in Massachusetts. We are seeing little miracles here every single day.

"...but behold I say unto you, that by small and simple things are great things brought to pass; and small means in many instances doth confound the wise.

"And the Lord God doth work by means to bring about his great and eternal purposes; and by very small means the Lord doth confound the wise and bringeth about the salvation of many souls."

Alma 37:6-7

I feel like I'm kind of living that scripture. What we're doing as missionaries isn't much on the big scale of things, but it can be if we are doing the Lord's will.

This time is just blowing by. One of the elders in our district, Elder Langford, was telling me that he feels like he's just watching the pages of a book fly by him as the time just goes and goes and goes so terribly quickly. I am definitely in accordance with his description of the time here.

I feel like this week I've kind of let myself get too comfortable just going with the flow. I'm not really consciously working toward any overarching goals of any true importance. With that said, I'm realizing a LOT of things that I can definitely work on. Now I'm just trying to decide what to do first. I don't know if that makes any sense...

The missionary work is going really well. We're working really hard and getting lots of new investigators. One super cool experience this week:

We were going with the Elders to one of our investigator's houses so that she could receive a blessing. When we got there, the door was open and her dad, who has Parkinson's, was having some troubles standing up so the Elders were able to help out. His wife showed up and we got him taken care of. We then found out that her daughter, our investigator, was actually asleep. Some of the medicines she had taken and some of the injections she'd had to get for some sort of back problem she has made her kind of out of it. So, the elders went on their merry way and we almost left too. But, we decided to stick around to talk to her mom, who is a member - she's inactive because she has to work on Sundays but she has a super solid testimony and is the sweetest person EVER! So, we were sharing a message with her, and her nephew and his family showed up. This member was so great, she just invited them in and turned the time back over to us to keep going on with our message (which is not something that people are usually willing to do...most of the time the change in dynamic means that our time is pretty much over). So, we got to know this young couple and their little 2 year old son and it turns out that the dad actually knows a lot about the church and really likes the church. So, we're going to go back to visit them again tomorrow. They're super excited to continue learning about the Book of Mormon. Lots of potential there :)

Other than that we've just been working away. One of our goals this week is to definitely have more experiences involving the member in our work. President Packard is so gung-ho about working with members in order to increase our missionary efforts and I can see, with the limited experience that I have, that he's on the right track.

I just want all my family and my dear friends to know how much I love you all!! It really amazes me just how much love one heart can hold. My heart feels like it's going to burst sometimes just thinking about how much I love so many people. Know that you are in my heart and in my prayers. Share the knowledge and the blessings you have with those around you - you will be able to experience even more of that love that you already have for other people. It's an incredible feeling.

This week has gone by quick! It seems like this whole mission is going by just as quickly! It is very strange for me to think that I will be hitting my year mark at the beginning of next transfer. Super weird.

It sounds like Grandpa Fran's funeral went well. I got to see the program - the picture on the front definitely made me smile. I'm glad most everyone got to be there to spend time together. I definitely miss Grandpa Fran, but I know without a doubt in my mind that everything will be okay and that everything happens for a reason.

This last week we have been placing a lot of emphasis on finding investigators. As we have had members coming with us to appointments, the other two will go and street contact people around the area or start knocking doors. We are getting a lot of potentials and hopefully we will start to see some progress as we continue following up with these people. It will be interesting to see what comes of it all.

We had a cool training experience last Wednesday. President Packard has been doing trainings/interview with each zone individually throughout the mission. Wednesday was our turn - so he was doing trainings/interviews in rotations with each district specifically. It was really neat to get his very personal and inspired take on the new vision that he has for the mission. He's such an inspired man and has felt very strongly impressed to make our mission a "Book of Mormon mission". This phrase has meaning to us as missionaries because usually we are constantly striving to be "Preach My Gospel Missionaries." While Preach My Gospel is still super important to know and be familiar with (it's the manual we use to know how to do all of our work), he feels very strongly about the power of the Book of Mormon. It really is the chosen tool to gather Israel in these latter days and he expects us to use it as such. It has gotten our companionship very excited about the Book of Mormon and I have found that as I have placed even a greater emphasis on learning the language of the Book of Mormon and familiarizing myself with important sections/verses, that I have grown spiritually and helped other people to draw on the that same spiritual power that comes from such an inspired book.

This week I have been super blessed to be able to witness the blessings that come from being faithful. Gaby, the newest member of our branch, has dealt with lots of trials over the last couple of months having to do with her living situation. To add to that, she lost her job this week because of having excessive time off to come to church. She faced it with a lot of faith, fasting and praying. She mentioned that she lost her job when she went to institute on Friday and on Saturday, one of the members called us with information to give her about a job! It worked out! She has already started! She's working at a restaurant that is within biking distance and the pay isn't too bad. She's started out just doing dishes and cleaning, but has the possibility to move to cook (which is what she did at her old job). The woman who hired her is super happy with her and she likes the people she works with! Yay!

As if that wasn't all, she was able to go to the temple on Saturday to do Baptisms for the Dead with the branch! Woot! We even got permission to go and be with her. It was super awesome! The spirit was strong! Her testimony is growing she is becoming so much more sensitive to the spirit. What's more, as I was sitting in the temple I was suddenly overcome with such a happy feeling - I really couldn't describe it if I tried - but I felt like my understanding of how blessed I am became a more firm knowledge than what I have ever known before. I felt so blessed to be worthy to be in the temple and to have partaken of the ordinances of salvation for myself and to witness these saving ordinances being done for others who now will have those same blessings if they so choose. I'm so blessed!

Thank you for all your prayers on my behalf. I love you all so much! Until next Monday :)

About

The function of this blog is to update friends and family of Katie (Sister Palmer) concerning her adventures in the Massachusetts, Boston LDS mission. The mission covers all of Massachusetts, Connectcicut, Rhode Island, Southern Vermont, Southern New Hampshire, and a small section of New York. Stay tuned for weekly emails and periodic picture updates of Katie's Grand Missionary Adventures!